William – Page 76 – Really Right

Einstein Vindicated Again

If you thought you were having a bad year because you voted for Hillary or have other issues with the direction of the cosmos, try being a physicist or astronomer. You see, somehow 68 percent of the universe is missing.

No, joke; 68 percent of the universe—according to the currently held theory—doesn’t exist and never did.
Link: Simulation suggests 68 percent of the universe may not actually exist

According to the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (Lambda-CDM) model, which is the current accepted standard for how the universe began and evolved, the ordinary matter we encounter every day only makes up around five percent of the universe’s density, with dark matter comprising 27 percent, and the remaining 68 percent made up of dark energy, a so-far theoretical force driving the expansion of the universe. But a new study has questioned whether dark energy exists at all, citing computer simulations that found that by accounting for the changing structure of the cosmos, the gap in the theory, which dark energy was proposed to fill, vanishes.

Scientist now confirm that the guys that developed this theory and won a Nobel Prize for Physics in 2011 for its development were wrong.

“The theory of general relativity is fundamental in understanding the way the universe evolves,” says Dobos. “We do not question its validity; we question the validity of the approximate solutions. Our findings rely on a mathematical conjecture which permits the differential expansion of space, consistent with general relativity, and they show how the formation of complex structures of matter affects the expansion. These issues were previously swept under the rug but taking them into account can explain the acceleration without the need for dark energy.”

For those of you that don’t understand the quotation cited above, it means that Einstein’s general theory of relativity is correct as long as you don’t round your math answer. Yes, in this age of computers, the eggheads that should know better, took a shortcut that injected errors into Einstein’s theory. Instead of checking their math, they invented dark energy “making it a placeholder plug for holes in current models.” When you end-up with a 68 percent error in your solution you deserve a failing grade not a Nobel Prize.

Is it me or did the guys in the era of slide rules do a better job of engineering than those with computers?

Comments on Beauty and the Beast

My protestations notwithstanding, the wife demanded to see Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. (Anything that passes as a musical will usually get her to purchase a ticket. Thankfully, she went with someone else to see La La Land.) Anyway, I admit that I made treks to the little boy’s room and snack bar during the film but what I did see of the film seemed really overhyped as far as the “rainbow people” was concerned. I’ve seen worse on broadcast television. It was blink and you miss it sort of stuff. Based on the posts from Focus on the Family and their fellow travelers, I was braced for some in your face propaganda; thankfully this was not the case. Unless you’re waiting to be offended, most of this stuff will go past both you and your children with hardly a notice.

The wife might be entertaining a return visit to go to the Beauty and the Beast Sing Along but I will sit that one out. Visions of The Rocky Horror Picture Show somehow do harm to what I might expect to see upon attending such an event. Girls Gone Wild meets off keyed singing; single guys, this might be your best opportunity since Sacramento hosted the Xena: Warrior Princess Convention several years ago.

More Gas Taxes

Governor Brown signed the gas tax bill one week after it was introduced in the legislature. Apparently we had to pass it to learn what’s in it because I doubt anybody that voted YES actually read it.
Link: news story from KCRA-TV

Per media reports, the bill is supposed to raise 52 billion dollars over ten years. If you believe that this is a temporary tax, then I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn that you might want to buy.

The pretext for this bill is that we have horrible roads because we are woefully under taxed. Now, California has the highest taxes in the country but somehow it is never enough. We have a spending problem not a revenue problem. Anyway, I digress.

Just for fun, I put all the numbers in my trusty Excel program and learned some interesting stuff.

KCRA’s math doesn’t work. Right off the top, 7 billion dollars are missing. I guess this is the cut off the top being diverted to the General Fund or to backfill underfunded pensions.

Of the remaining 45 billion, 24.44 percent is going to public transportation and non-road repair purposes.

Thus, 34 billion is supposed to be going to road repair over ten years. This means the tax is generating 3.4 billion per year for road repair. Currently the state diverts about two billion from road repairs from just two taxes that it collects on commercial vehicles. Extrapolating the other funds diverted from road repair means that there is no reason to have this tax. If the legislature would just follow both the law and the promises made to the people, all our repair needs would be fully funded with no new taxes.

But it’s actually worse than this. Money currently going to transportation can now be diverted from transportation to the General Fund. The way government budgeting works, this is the reality of what happens. Plus, the legislature is lying when they say that this money will go to its intended purpose. Yes some will but look at their miserable track record on this issue. Every few years they find a way to weasel out of promises made in the previous election cycle.

Tax revenue creates a government dependency on the revenue source, much like the homeless guy with an addiction problem; however, what happens in 2030 (a mere 13 years from now) when the internal combustion engine is outlawed in California. On this subject, look for two things to happen simultaneously: cars with gasoline engines will no longer be sold and gas stations will be outlawed via regulatory power and people that own “legacy” automobiles simply won’t be able to purchase fuel.

Lastly, did you notice that one Republican sold his birthright to give the governor a YES vote? In the proud tradition of Maurice Johannsson and Roger Niello, Anthony Cannella voted YES in exchange for 500 million dollars. This is less than one percent of the total amount of revenue the new taxes are supposed to raise; plus the governor can now say there was bipartisan support for the bill. Any bets that this guy is out on term limits soon?

Oroville Fix Update

The headline today, Governor Brown waived some environmental reviews on emergency construction at Oroville Dam. But look at the last paragraph in the story.

Authorities say designs for the redone main spillway are about 60 percent complete. State water officials still aren’t releasing an estimated price tag for the rush repairs, but say they hope to award contracts for the work by April 17.

Fact 1
OK, it’s close of business on April 6th. The state Department of Water Resources says the plans for the fix (temporary one per previous media reports) are 60 percent completed.

Fact 2
They hope to awards contracts by April 17th.

They are finishing the plans, soliciting bids, and deciding who will be awarded the contract seven business days from now? What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

Conclusion
Either the fix is in on who will be awarded this contract or these guys are dumber than dirt to think they can get a bid price with unfinished plans. Oh, change order is spelled $$$$$$

Diversity in Media

“Any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up.”
Link: David Gabriel, VP of sales for Marvel

So what has Marvel been up to lately?

Over recent years, Marvel has made efforts to include more diverse and more female characters, introducing new iterations of fan favourites including a female Thor; Riri Williams, a black teenager who took over the Iron Man storyline as Ironheart; Miles Morales, a biracial Spider-Man and Kamala Khan, a Muslim teenage girl who is the current Ms Marvel.

Writer of the Kamala Khan Ms Marvel series, G Willow Wilson responded to Gabriel’s comments … and criticising Marvel’s tendency to introduce the new iterations of fan favourites by “killing off or humiliating the original character … Who wants a legacy if the legacy is shitty?”

If this sounds familiar, it should. George Takei, said something similar about the last Star Trek movie, when producers decided to make his character—Hikaru Sulu—into a homosexual, complete with “husband” and baby. Takei said they should have made a new character, not changed the cannon of Star Trek.
“Unfortunately, it’s a twisting of Gene’s creation, to which he put in so much thought. I think it’s really unfortunate” – George Takei

Hollywood is hell bent on making this issue one that you can’t avoid. Look at it from their point of view, they get to simultaneously teardown some part of an American symbol or institution and replace it with something else.

Partly, this is laziness on their part described as creativity. Stan Lee or whoever pours decades of work into something and then some young punk comes along and highjacks it in the name of diversity. Why? It’s hard to make an original thing successful.

Revisionism, especially as it relates to homosexuality, is just the latest fad in Hollywood. Xena: Warrior Princess and Wonder Woman are slated to become “gender-benders”. Xena is being revived by NBC as a television series and Wonder Woman—in her second movie—is expected to “come out”.

This is just the latest iteration of Democrat group politics. No character stands on its own merits. Everybody is just assumed to identify with a group, and the group must advance or no one does. This plantation mentality is just dumb and shortsighted; not to mention insulting.

Dear Hollywood Liberals, the more you push these issues, the less of your products that I will buy. I want characters that are entertaining and have a moral code not ones that get their identity with who they sleep with.
• I dumped my DirecTV a year ago because of this.
• I’ve seen every Star Trek movie except the last one because of this issue. Oh, and I will take a pass on the new Star Trek TV show on CBS because you are pushing homosexual characters.
• I’m done with most everything Disney because of this and yes, Disney there are many children in this country that have never owned a Mickey Mouse piece of clothing or even know who you guys are because of your abandonment to “family values”. If Star Wars or Marvel movies go the direction of Star Trek then I’m done with them too.

I want something my children can see that has good role models not morally broken ones. If I want my kids to see morally broken people and what they are really like then I’ll let them watch the evening news not your programming.

Ovoville Fix: California’s Jump the Shark Moment

Steve Camp did a song many years ago about “playing marbles with diamonds”. Camp was lamenting the fact that the Church seems to squander its opportunities and not take its job seriously. In like manner, the State of California is failing to take the issues relating to the Oroville dam seriously.

As I’ve stated before, nobody in State government has ever been involved in the construction of any large scale water storage project. There is no institutional memory in the government bureaucracy of how to successfully do such a project. All anyone knows is that a mountain of paperwork is required before such a project can be undertaken; a process that can take decades to complete. In their mind, a fix is not possible if they go thru normal channels; however, nobody wants to cede their part of the regulations to get the job done.

I submit that the situation is much more dire than you realize. Governor Brown has assembled a crack team of experts and this is what they have floated as a solution:

One temporary recommendation is building an angled flip just above the collapse site. If water needs to be released from the lake down the spillway, the flip would launch the water away from the hole, preventing further erosion.
Link: Making water jump the gap

Really? That’s the best you’ve got?

History lesson: we tried that before in California. It was called hydraulic mining.
Link: California Gold Rush hydraulic mining

It was outlawed in 1884 because of the devastation that it caused to California’s waterways and agricultural land. Now our crack state engineers want to use the same technique on an ever larger scale to save the Oroville Dam? What could possibly go wrong launching 100,000 cubic feet of water per second into the air? Amazing.

OK, so the government can’t do it, what about the private sector? I submit that in a litigious state like California that no insurance company will cover such a project. Look we already had one evacuation for 200,000 people; plus many more would be affected if the dam had further failure. Folks there are tens of billions in potential liability and whoever touches that dam will own it until the end of time. Unless the state gives the contractors a special exemption from liability, why would anyone want to participate in such a repair job?

Then there is the issue of state jobs requiring that prevailing wages be paid. In normal times, prevailing wages add forty percent to the cost of constructing a public school. Can you imagine how much this government mandated wage inflation—in one of the poorest regions of the state—is going to add to the price of any potential fix? Does Oroville even have the infrastructure in place to support the demand for concrete and related materials? I really doubt it.

Dear readers, there are thousands more similar infrastructure issues in this state that are currently being ignored by government. Oh and you have been paying taxes for decades to fix many of them but the money is diverted elsewhere. If and when “the Big One” happens, then you will know just how truly mismanaged this state has been.

Whatever happens to the spillway, I promise that it will be an excuse to raise taxes and somehow the money won’t really improve things all that much. Likely it will start out as a temporary tax that will still be in effect a century from now.

Opposition to Trump One of Biblical Proportions

Anthology series like Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and Amazing Stories often start with a world like ours and then tweak one aspect in order to allow a character to participate in some fantastic adventure that otherwise would be totally improbable. The results are often extreme; either to the good or bad for the person that is the focus of the story.

Rarely do we get to witness a real life adventure that is on par with these types of stories. I know there have been others. I had a great uncle named Charles that entered the US Army at the ripe age of 14 in May of 1941. In December of that year, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and my uncle spent the war fighting in the Pacific. He was discharged in 1946 and still not 21 years old and thus not even old enough to vote.

Today, we are witnessing one of the greatest stories of the 21st Century; the Presidency of Donald J Trump. Barack Obama divided the country more than anyone since Richard Nixon; however, Trump has united both parties in their hatred of him. Why? Trump actually expects the members of Congress to do their job and serve the people not themselves. This is the modern day version of Mr. Smith goes to the White House.

Trump is everything that Arnold Schwarzenegger promised California voters in his first run for governor and never delivered. Trump is truly unique. What he promised during his campaign, he is delivering when in office. Folks, I can’t begin to tell you how rare and refreshing that this is. Both parties hate him for this. Trump is fighting an uphill battle against all three branches of government, plus the Federal Reserve, and the media. Make no mistake, this is total war. It’s Trump and about half the voting public versus the status quo.

Next time you read about the kings in the Old Testament tearing down the Ashura Poles and pagan high places, maybe you will understand the type of resistance that they faced and boldness it took for them to do this. I believe Trump is tearing down many similar strongholds in our nation. Gary North and R.J. Rushdoony’s idea that a change in law is a change in religion is clearly validated by Trump’s presidency.

Law, culture, and religion are all intertwined. Pluralism is just a temporary cease-fire until one faction gains a winning advantage over others. The faction that views government as their god tried to press their advantage to victory and crush the opposition; especially, Christians; this is the legacy of Barack Obama.

Trump has been compared to Cyrus or Constantine—and this may be a fair comparison—because he is a defender of The Faith while he himself may not be a believer. I for one am praying for Donald Trump and hoping that he succeeds.

More Proof Political Divide is Spiritual

Lest you needed more proof that the political divide is primarily spiritual, check out this from Todd Starnes yesterday.

Link: Town hall agitators explode at the name of Jesus
Below are a portions of the story.

A group of enraged protesters exploded in anger after a chaplain prayed in the name of Jesus at a town hall meeting in Louisiana hosted by U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy.

The Feb. 22 town hall meeting in Metairie, was quickly overrun by the angry mob – much like other town hall meetings hosted by Republican lawmakers across the country.

The mainstream media would have us believe the unruly demonstrations are part of an organic, grassroots effort.

But I sincerely doubt many in the mob were actually residents of Louisiana – because I know the good people of Louisiana and nobody behaves like that in the Bayou State.

Folks are raised right in Cajun Country. There’s no way anybody would embarrass their mommas by acting the fool in public.

I’d be willing to bet a cup of Community Coffee that the Jesus-hating rabble-rousers were shipped in from some God-forsaken place like Berkeley or Brooklyn.

But they became absolutely unhinged when he concluded his prayer in the name of Jesus.

“Wow, they booed the name of Jesus,” Cassidy said in remarks reported by the Times-Picayune

Adam

Adam was just entering his teen years when I last saw him. His family moved out of state shortly after I was married. His dad was in my wedding party and a great guy. His dad had a great sense of humor. Except for his irrational love of Monty Python, I usually found that we liked many of the same things.

As is common for church members, we had a going away party for the family before their big move. At the party, I happened to mention to him an obscure song by Marty McCall and Fireworks called Adam.

The song is presented from the point of view of the singer blaming Adam for causing this world of woe by sinning in The Garden. The song wonders what the world would be like if the original Adam had not disobeyed long ago. The lyrics include the line,”Adam how I hated you…”

(“Adam” was released by Fireworks in 1981 and can be found on YouTube.)

Adam’s reaction to this brief portion of our conversation was really weird. He seemed to take it as if the song was about him, not a guy that lived a few thousand years ago. I tried to get him to understand that it was not about him but I still remember him not letting it go.

Years later, he and I became Facebook friends. On Facebook, I was friends with his parents and since he was now an adult, I became friends with him too. (Subsequently, his folks deleted their Facebook account.) When I viewed his page, what a shock I had. The squeaky clean kid I knew in California was living far away and had become some kind of Goth. Everything was black. Sadly, so was his heart. He was into drugs and had tried several times to commit suicide. He was effectively homeless. I occasionally would look him up on Facebook. Sometimes I would post a Scripture or encouraging word.

How this kid that was “raised right” could end-up so messed-up was tragic. From the outside he had everything: a loving two parent family, an upper middle class home, a good church, education, etc. I remember praying for him often during my breaks at work.

Last week we visited Church of the King in Roseville. My wife and I ran into some mutual friends that we know there. It was then that we learned that Adam had committed suicide. Apparently, it happened months ago but word was circulating slowly all the way to California. I was devastated that this wonderful kid that I once knew had fallen far enough to purposely take his life.

The first chance I had, I checked my phone to see if Adam’s Facebook account was still there. I wanted confirmation. Unlike many that I know have died, his Facebook account was gone.
(Note: there is nothing creepier to me than getting an automated reminder from Facebook to wish a dead person a happy birthday.)

Later, I think I found an obituary online, but the site wanted money to access the information. Suicide is not exactly something those left behind like to brag about so I understand that it is hard to find information about one, even in this digital age.

I miss Adam. I think the world was a better place with him in it. I’m sad for his family.

Trump rally in Florida shows what really divides America

Link: Melania Trump attacked for reciting ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ at campaign rally

As I wrote to Mr. Winton earlier this week, the political divide in our country is spiritual; Christianity versus Secular Humanism. Man likes to put himself in the place of God.

This is the spiritual divide:

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. I Joh 2: 15-17

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Romans 1: 18-32

The Left is screaming like demons because they are following the doctrine of demons. Their god is government (and power). Trump is dedicated to tearing down many of their strongholds and they aren’t happy. I don’t know where Trump is spiritually, but I’m confident that God is using him to clean-up the mess that has poisoned our country for so many years.